194 DR. JOHN WEYER AND THE WITCH MANIA In the Middle Ages it was held that a man who called up thedevU, knowing it to be wrong, was not a heretic but merely aBinner. But ff he thought it was not wrong, or that the devilwould teU him the truth, or that the devU could do anythmgwithout God's permission, he was also a heretic, since these beUefsare contrary to Church doctrine. In the fifteenth century it wastaught that aU sorcerers are heretics, maleficus being, according tothe learned authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, a contraction ofmale defide sentiens or heretic.^ Nor was the identification of heresy and witchcraft Ulogical,whatever we may think of the etymology. The Church is thekingdom of God, heretics form the kingdom of the devU, and just asthe Church possesses saints who see visions, work miracles, andeommune with Christ face to face, so there are specially eminentheretics, saints of the devil's church, who work miracles and haveobscene intercourse with their master. All true Christians arepotential saints, all heretics potential sorcerers, for all have comŽmitted treason against the divine Majesty, though only some mayhave entered into a definite compact with the enemy. The former,if they repent, may hope for perpetual imprisonment; the latterare to be put to death whether they repent or not. This view was also of advantage to the Church, for it increasedthe horror of heresy and facilitated its suppression. The laity hadnever entirely reconcUed themselves to the sight of their apparentlyharmless neighbours being tortured and burnt for differences inabstract belief, but almost every one was ready to torture and burna sorcerer, and local outbreaks of witch-hunting were frequentlystarted by mob violence. In 1555 it was declared by the Peace ofAugsburg that no one should suffer in lffe and property for hisreligion ; but to take a Lutheran, call him a sorcerer, confiscatehis goods, and force him by torture to confess that he was ledinto his errors by the devU himself, seems to have been too greata temptation for the prince-bishops who headed the ' counter-reformation' in South Germany to resist. That this was partlythe cause of the great witch-burnings in the bishoprics ofWiirzburg, Bamberg, Fulda, and Treves is evidenced by thelarge proportion of male \dctims, and by the frequent and signi- ^ H. Institoris and J. Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, editio princeps, Cologne1486, and frequently reprinted untU the end of the seventeenth century. Seeespecially pars 1, quaestio 2.